Book read: The Trouble With Physics by Lee Smolin

I got this book a couple of months back and have completed it today. The early chapters explain in layman terms where Physics has got to in the last 30 years. This an interesting read for me, the various unification attempts, quantum mechanics, gravity, fundamtental particles, and string theory.

The books main message is that research has followed a narrow path for too long, and it's difficult to bring new ideas to a field which do not fit with the majority view. The author is particularly dismissive of string theory because of this.

The final chapters lay out what would make the situation better. It feels like research science careers are built on backing the current research areas and there is very little room for anything else. The author makes an interesting comparison to venture capital who expect 90% of new businesses to fail, and anything less then they are not taking enough risk. He argues it would be worth having this view on research to try and stimulate new areas where current theory has stagnated.

Film: Bullet Proof Monk

I don't watch that many films but someone bought me this as a joke. I liked the name and in fairness it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Still a good versus evil battle, fairly cheesy plotline - and ok production. I managed to sit through it and avoid turning it off. Certainly not an important piece of cinema history.

A struggling 4/10.

Old school photo

I saw an old school photo today from my class in 1978 my first year at school. It was quite strange seeing it especially putting names to faces - some easy some needed thinking about.

There were only about 20 kids, and I remember the class was mixed ages. I think this smaller class size explained why the school closed and merged with one nearby. I remember starting there and the teacher complaining she now had 30 children!

It has to be said life was a lot simpler back then, no computers, mass communication was a thing of the future - we were still living off the last year of a failed Labour government (ring any bells?). Thatcher hadn't happened yet - and the gulf wars were still a long time away. Having said that the country didn't feel like a failure, but then a 5 year old isn't going to be on top of that sort of detail.

One sad story a boy I recognised in the photo I knew died shortly after leaving school. Of course you can never know, but to think from that photo he only had 12 short years left.

Aircraft Carriers

The UK has just signed a big defence deal for two new aircraft carriers - the deal has been many years in the wings with initial design work already done.

It was a strange decision in the 1960s to cancel the future carrier programme. The UK made do with helicopter crusiers that were only really saved by the versatile Harrier. We've also now gone more into helicopter landing platforms - good support vessels for land force support.

With all the equipment shortatges in Iraq and Afghanistan it's a very strange decision to be placing orders for carriers. Especially when the aircraft to put on them might be beyond our budget (10 bn I heard), also the destroyer escort has been cut back to six ships. The news item I saw kept on mentioning "powerful ships" but in reality they are vulnerable in the extreme.

Windows Free (Almost)

A couple of months ago I replaced by 6 year old laptop with a new one from Dell. I wasn't that keen on Vista having used it. My main complaint was just speed, I'd seen it on a good spec laptop just feel so sluggish and that was before any eye candy was turned on.

I was a big fan of Windows XP - it really was Microsoft's best go yet at a home O/S. In the end I bought a Dell preinstalled with Ubuntu (a distro I'd never used before). Overall I'm really pleased and impressed by Ubuntu - they really have simplified Linux installation and package management. I have re-installed to a newer version and there were a few issues getting wireless drivers to work.

I'm not anti-Windows by any means, but what would make me go back? I keep hearing about Windows 7 and I think they could do a lot worse than follow Apples lead of a reliable kernel (why write your own?) and shipping dev tools in the O/S to encourage development on the platform.

NHS 10 year plan

The NHS is 60 years old so what a good day to publish a 10 year plan (Stalin would be impressed, he kept himself to 5 years).

I've read the reports of the proposals, better accessibility sounds good although I think it will be a struggle to run 8am-8pm surgeries. One paper I read gave an example of how blood tests are currently done, 1/2 day off work to get a form from your GP, followed by another 1/2 off work to go to a hospital to have the test. So the taxpayer actually funding this hardly gets an efficient service.

But then there are gimmicks, "dashboards" of stats to show what a hospital is like. As with so many other professions when will we learn that quality is so difficult to measure, and in trying to measure it you can affect it (as people chase targets and game the system - they always will).

Walk: Hambledon

Went for a 4 mile walk around the outskirts of Hambledon a small village a few miles north of Denmead.

Hambledon itself is the disputed birth place of cricket and has a historic cricket club (the MCC of it's day I'm guessing). The walk started off through a church and then over some fields which look across to an impressive hill landscape.

Continuing through a small copse, another field, and a steep tree covered climb called dog kennel lane. Crossing some fields you could see Portsdown Hill. The walk finished with some country lanes back to Hambledon village.